The first major retrospective of the works of Carlo Alfano hosted by a museum, the monographic exhibition explores the oeuvre of an artist who has left an indelible mark in the development of Italian conceptual art. In collaboration with ARCHIVIO ALFANO.

The Mart continues its exploration of artists who defied the limits of traditional artistic practices in the second half of the twentieth century and significantly contributed to redefining the boundaries of contemporary art.
The monographic exhibition is the first major retrospective of the work of Carlo Alfano hosted in a museum. Starting from a nucleus of works that for many years have been absent from international art shows or rarely exhibited at all, the exhibition illustrates the artist’s creative path from the mid-1960s to the end of the eighties. Fifty works, many of which assume monumental dimensions, illustrate the developments in an artistic quest that has yet to be fully explored.

After his debut in the 1950s in association with the Informalism movement, Carlo Alfano (1932-1990) went on to explore the mechanisms of vision and perception, extending his quest from works of kinetic art to the creation of three-dimensional environments. Starting in the late 1960s, his distinctive analytical approach began to assume increasingly evident characteristics of conceptual art. Amply represented in the exhibition, this stage in his career is characterized by linguistic and philosophical elements that explore space and time, the individual and the other. Among the most famous works we note the Distanze series and the work Stanza per voci, installed for the first time in the dual-frame version, and the Frammenti di un autoritratto anonimo cycle, which he began in 1969 and continued working on to the end of his life. During the 1970s and with even greater continuity in the following decade, Alfano returned to figuration, turning his gaze to mythological subjects and iconographic references to the history of art, without, however, abandoning the self-reflective dimension that distinguishes his entire oeuvre.
The exhibition illustrates the developments in Alfano’s art with special attention to how the works are displayed, giving the visitor the experience of the theatrical inclination that is one of his hallmarks. The exhibition includes works from major private collections and public institutions, such as the Galleria Nazionale d’arte moderna and the Museo d’Arte contemporanea Donnaregina.
The monograph with contributions from Flavia Alfano, Maria De Vivo, Stefano Ferrari, Denis Isaia, Gianfranco Maraniello and Andrea Viliani represents the most complete compendium of the artist's works currently in existence. Published in Italian and English, it was made possible thanks to the ARCHIVIO ALFANO.

An exhibition to rediscover the work of one of the most interesting artists in the Italian and international arts scene in the second half of the twentieth century.

More than fifteen years after the last major exhibition of his works in an arts institution, Francesco Lo Savio (1935-1963) is again the focus of a monographic museum exhibition that draws on new research to cast fresh light on the artist’s oeuvre. Archival materials, sketches, plans and photographs, many exhibited for the first time, provide the basis for this novel project.

Among the preeminent names in the Italian and international arts scene, Lo Savio introduced a wealth of ideas that would be picked up by the minimalists and conceptual artists during a brief but blazing career that was cut short by his death at the age of twenty-eight.
A relationship with architecture underpins not just his projects, but also his entire creative thought process, a theoretical device that guided him in rethinking the role of art in contemporary society. Indeed, the distinctive style of his works – few of which were exhibited during the artist’s lifetime – is more architectural than minimal.
Through a selection of fifty works, the exhibition spans Lo Savio’s entire creative arc, highlighting the principal elements that best define his quest: the study of space and the rendering of light. The exhibition traces out a trajectory from his Filtri, heavily textured layers whose surface becomes a vibrant pattern of images, through the paintings in the Spazio-Luce series, to the Metalli and the Articolazioni totali, structures engaging in a manifesto-dialogue with the architectural space in which they are situated.
The itinerary concludes with Lo Savio’s architectural and urban design projects, where the artist redefines the elements of his sculptural, visual and conceptual practice in his well known studies for the Maison au soleil, the prototype for a dwelling unit inspired by Le Corbusier’s buildings.
A central figure in the Roman art scene in the 1960s, Lo Savio has exhibited internationally and his works are now preserved in public museums and private collections, including the Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, the Museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina, Fondazione Prada and the Pinault Collection, which have provided important loans for the Mart exhibition.
The exhibition will be followed by the publication of a monograph with contributions from some of the foremost Lo Savio specialists, a critical edition of the artist’s writings, and a collection of unpublished documents.
Curated by Silvia Lucchesi, Alberto Salvadori, Riccardo Venturi